Day: December 9, 2004

This hasn’t gotten around all that much, but a well-placed source confides there was very little love earlier this year between Clint Eastwood and certain Warner Bros. production execs who had voiced almost no enthusiasm about making Million Dollar Baby, on top of having pulled roughly the same crap when he tried to get them to support the making of Mystic River two years ago. In both cases the WB production execs — relative whippersnappers who don’t get Eastwood because he’s not much of a youth-market magnet — “begrudgingly” okayed both films. The source says Eastwood “was so stung by the lack of faith evidenced by the suits, and felt so pissed that he went ahead and shot Million Dollar Baby without a unit publicist — which is why we never read any on-set location pieces — and vowed he would do only minimal publicity to promote the flick.” Of course, this posture makes little sense now in view of the acclaim Baby is receiving, and Clint may well be shfting gears as the Oscar nominations approach. The source contends, however, that “before anyone at the studio had a chance to see Baby, WB reportedly sold off all foreign rights for under $20 million. This decision may come back to haunt certain people.” Like all stories told late in the night over a campfire, this one probably has holes in it. But it comes from a person who ought to know, and is obviously worth looking into.

Nothing substantive can be gathered from a skillfully-cut teaser assembled from what will obviously be a sumptuous visual experience, but go to the site for Terrence Malick’s The New World (New Line, late ’05) and tell me it doesn√ɬ≠t get your blood going. The dp is Emmanuel Lubezki (Y Tu Mama Tambien, Sleepy Hollow) and man oh man…awesome. Malick√ɬ≠s historical drama is another go at the age-old saga of Captain John Smith (Colin Farrell) and Pocahantas (Q’orianka Kilcher), set in olde Virginia. I√ɬ≠ll bet Farrell is comforted that the teaser has arrived right on the heels of the Alexander shutdown. There√ɬ≠s also his performance in Robert Towne√ɬ≠s drama Ask the Dust, about L.A. novelist John Fante, to look forward to.

Speaking of Alexander, Oliver Stone will be talking this evening (Thursday, 11.9) with writer-director Rod Lurie on the stage of the Leo S. Bing theatre at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art at 7:30 pm.

Best prediction line so far about Saturday’s L.A. Film Critics voting (which I’ll be re-running in tomorrow’s story about same): “Virginia Madsen would seem a Best Supporting Actress slam-dunk for Sideways, if only because every heterosexual male in the group would like to…well…give her an award.”

I’ve been meaning to tap out something based on my recent Beverly Hills sit-down with Fahrenheit 9/11 director Michael Moore, but I’ll say this for now: In his meetings with local journos over the past couple of weeks, Moore has been making a compelling argument. Fahrenheit is alive and well in the Best Picture competish despite John Kerry’s loss because “it’s the emotion, stupid.” Moore didn’t use these words (he’s graciously soft-peddled and aw-shucksy in private conversation), but he’s right — his film made people a lot of people tear up (it got to me this way when I saw it at Cannes), and this is the key barometer by which most of the Academy members decide on their Best Picture finalists. There’s the other small matter about F9/11 being a stellar piece of agitprop with one of the most masterfully edited and narrated finales of any film this year…but that’s me talking.